You’ve heard the saying – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I’ve been thinking about that the past day or so.

I am currently in Orange County at the beautiful Pelican Hill resort doing a live backstage announce gig for a biotech company. This is the 4th year in a row that I have been asked to be the voice of the company for this particular sales meeting. It is a fun job. The people are nice. The food and accomodations are always more than good. And the pay is quite good as well. But each year, I try to not think about the next year. Because next year may not come.

Early in my voiceover career – or perhaps I should call it my free lance career, because I was doing other things besides voiceover at that time (producing and writing and some on-camera spokesperson) – I had a very large regional client for whom I recorded 4 radio and 4 TV spots every month. They went out of business suddenly and – boom, I lost half my income in one fell swoop.

This taught me a big lesson and to this day I not only try to provide excellent service my regular clients, but I am always looking for new relationships to develop. You just never know what will happen. Budgets get cut. Companies go out of business. Decision makers decide to go another direction.

If you know that you are good at what you do, you won’t take this personally. But you must be prepared for these changes.